This Cartoonist Won A MacArthur Genius Grant For Her Work On Suicide, Lesbians, And Small-Town America

Cartoonist Alison Bechdel was named a MacArthur Fellow on
Wednesday and will receive a $625,000 no-strings-attached grant
to advance her idiosyncratic art.

Bechdel makes comics, but not in the cape and cowl variety — her
work digs into small-town American childhood, parental
relationships, and gender identity.

From "Dykes to Watch Out
For."Youtube

Bechdel cut her teeth penning "Dykes to Watch Out For," a
gender-studies-and-current-events comic strip that gained a cult
following through its 1983 to 2008 run.

In 2006 she
published her first book, "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic." It's about
her growing up in a small town in Pennsylvania and her
increasingly complex relationship with her father, who she didn't
know had sexual relationships with men until she came out to her
parents.

The book is
heartfelt, honest, and deals in the ambiguities of family life.
Bechdel leaves the reader wondering if her father killed himself
on the day he was hit by a truck and died — or if it was an
accident.

From "Fun Home: A Family
Tragicomic."Houghton
Mifflin

Her second book arrived in 2012. Called "Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama," the
graphic memoir uses a psychoanalytic lens to better understand
her relationship with her mom.

"What I love about cartooning is the way you have access to these
two different kinds of communication," she tells the MacArthur
Foundation.

"I love putting sentences together, but language remains
symbolic, it still has to get filtered through our brains," she
says. "Whereas drawing, it's right there, immediate, and you just
assimilate it without having to think about it. I love having
access to both kinds of communication when I tell my
stories."

"Getting this
kind of recognition from the MacArthur Foundation, I can feel it
already changing my life," she says. "I'm having to adjust to the
fact that this has happened, therefore I must be doing something
worthwhile. And to have that kind of confidence put into my work
is a huge gift, and I'm going to work very, very hard to live up
to those expectations."

Check out her full bio here, and watch the full MacArthur
Foundation interview with her below.